Lady Byron Vindicated eBook

In the first place, with our present ideas of propriety
and good taste, we should reckon it an indecorum to
make the private affairs of a pure and good woman,
whose circumstances under any point of view were trying,
and who evidently shunned publicity, the subject of
public discussion in magazines which were read all
over the world.

Lady Byron, as they all knew, had on her hands a most
delicate and onerous task, in bringing up an only
daughter, necessarily inheriting peculiarities of
genius and great sensitiveness; and the many mortifications
and embarrassments which such intermeddling with her
private matters must have given, certainly should have
been considered by men with any pretensions to refinement
or good feeling.

But the literati of England allowed her no consideration,
no rest, no privacy.

In ‘The Noctes’ of November 1825 there
is the record of a free conversation upon Lord and
Lady Byron’s affairs, interlarded with exhortations
to push the bottle, and remarks on whisky-toddy.
Medwin’s ‘Conversations with Lord Byron’
is discussed, which, we are told in a note, appeared
a few months after the noble poet’s death.

There is a rather bold and free discussion of Lord
Byron’s character—­his fondness for
gin and water, on which stimulus he wrote ‘Don
Juan;’ and James Hogg says pleasantly to Mullion,
’O Mullion! it’s a pity you and Byron
could na ha’ been acquaint. There would
ha’ been brave sparring to see who could say
the wildest and the dreadfullest things; for he had
neither fear of man or woman, and would ha’ his
joke or jeer, cost what it might.’ And
then follows a specimen of one of his jokes with an
actress, that, in indecency, certainly justifies the
assertion. From the other stories which follow,
and the parenthesis that occurs frequently (’Mind
your glass, James, a little more!’), it seems
evident that the party are progressing in their peculiar
kind of civilisation.

It is in this same circle and paper that Lady Byron’s
private affairs come up for discussion. The
discussion is thus elegantly introduced:—­

Hogg.—­’Reach me the
black bottle. I say, Christopher, what, after
all, is your opinion o’ Lord and Leddy Byron’s
quarrel? Do you yoursel’ take part
with him, or with her? I wad like to hear your
real opinion.’

North.—­’Oh, dear!
Well, Hogg, since you will have it, I think Douglas
Kinnard and Hobhouse are bound to tell us whether there
be any truth, and how much, in this story about
the declaration, signed by Sir Ralph’
[Milbanke].

The note here tells us that this refers to a statement
that appeared in ‘Blackwood’ immediately
after Byron’s death, to the effect that, previous
to the formal separation from his wife, Byron required
and obtained from Sir Ralph Milbanke, Lady Byron’s
father, a statement to the effect that Lady Byron
had no charge of moral delinquency to bring against
him. {61}